Winter
by Sachita
Summary: There is a ghost in Minerva McGonagall's chambers. A ghost of the past. Tom/Minerva.


_Hi everybody - just something very small as a birthday present for a dear friend - **iviscrit** :) Happy Birthday to you! I shall take this as an occasion to start writing again, too. It's been long enough. Thank you for reading and taking the time to review! :) Also apologies for weird vocabulary, English isn't my first language. This is not the most cheerful of pieces, but I like to think that there's some kind of bittersweet feeling to it.  
_

_Best wishes to all from summertime Germany (I realise the title of this fic is a bit of a contradiction), Sachita :)_

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**Winter **

There was a ghost in Minerva McGonagall's chambers. It was a curious ghost and a wandering one. His long transparent fingers ghosted over old pictures, white-and-black ones, coloured ones, telling of a long and eventful life. One showed a young couple embracing passionately and then jumping apart as if caught committing a heinous act. The young woman blushed fiercely and looked at the ground while the boy was torn between smirking cheekily and straightening out his clothes.

"You just came out of nowhere and kissed me," she accused from behind the ghost's back with her gravelly voice, her old age quite apparent.

"I had to, or else you would have never taken the first step. For all your brazenness you could be remarkably shy around me," the ghost replied in a rather dismissive manner, giving the young couple on the picture a final look and drifting through the room.

"I see it's winter," he remarked, looking out of the window. Scotland had lots of snow in winter and the outside was ghastly cold and barren. A few snowflakes were whirled around in a frenzy and the few pupils outside were already hurrying back to the castle in anticipation of the coming storm.

She sighed. "I wish you wouldn't come back. You have been dead for so long now."

The ghost's smirk was an odd mix of nastiness and an old fondness that had never quite been extinguished. With a flamboyant gesture, he swiped some of his black hair back behind his ears. "You are the one who isn't letting me go."

"That's not true!" she protested. "I gave you up a long time ago."

"Did you, Minerva?" There was something cold in his look, something dismissive. "You were never good at letting go."

The old woman took her walking stick and limped over to the window. The limp came from an old leg wound that she had got during the Second War, which had never really healed.

"It looks like it always does;" she remarked almost dreamily, staring out of the window at the snow-covered grounds. "I can see you chasing me across the grounds, laughing, with wind-tousled hair and red cheeks, your hair all in disarray..."

"You are drifting off." The ghost's voice was snide, though there was an ounce of bitterness in it as well. "You are becoming old."

That startled a laugh out of Minerva and she straightened her white locks, wrapping herself tighter in her woollen tartan-patterned blanket. "It's 2020. Good heavens, in terms of Muggle age I will be a hundred in five years!"

He didn't seem to listen, but instead sat down in her favourite rocking chair, gazing at her intently. She considered him through her thick glasses: a young boy, not even twenty years of age, with neatly combed black hair and eyes the colour of the skies on a clear winter sky. He was wearing tidy pleated trousers and a white Oxford shirt beneath a green sweater.

"That's how I remember you," she chuckled suddenly, "always with those trousers and that sweater. You loved the sweater, although its pattern always clashed with your trousers. You are not supposed to wear that combination. It makes you look ridiculous."

The ghost scoffed. "It hardly matters now, does it?" he asked, a tinge of a London accent in his words. "Like you said, I am dead."

The words stung, even after so many years, and she closed her eyes. "You could have chosen differently."

"You never trusted me."

She sighed. "You never gave me any reason to, but Tom-" the ghost started at that name.

"Tom," he said slowly, as if trying to fit the name on his tongue. "Tom. I suppose that is what they called me."

"Yes," Minerva replied as if in a trance, approaching her old rocking chair with a wrinkly hand outstretched. "You were Tom and I loved you."

He watched her approach, something wary in his gaze. Her hand came closer to his face, closer even - she could have sworn that she felt his warm breath on her skin – but just as she was about to touch him, her hand passed through him.

Tom screamed in rage and pain and he whirled through the room in a fit, knocking over the picture of the couple on her mantlepiece. "Let me go!" he shouted.

"Never," she whispered, "never."

A gust of air, and when she looked up from her crouching position next to the rocking chair, he was right in front of her, just centimetres away and she could have sworn that she felt his breath on her face, could have sworn that she had actually been able to touch his face...

"Truth be told, Minerva," he said quietly, "I wouldn't want you to either."

A concerned voice shook her out of her reverie and she saw young Neville Longbottom standing behind her- not so young Mister Longbottom, she corrected herself sternly. After all he was working and teaching at Hogwarts as well and she had never failed to address a colleague in the proper manner. "Professor! Are you alright?"

She smiled warmly. "Yes, Mr. Longbottom, thank you." Neville helped her limp over to the mantlepiece, concern clear in his eyes. "Are you sure you are alright, Professor?"

"Yes," she replied more firmly, motioning to a picture frame showing a young couple, that had fallen over. "Would you be a dear and help me righten that? A careless lad must have knocked it over sometime."  
The storm rattled against the windows, and the firs' branches brushed wetly against the glass, as if reproaching her for her audacious words.

Minerva gazed out and wondered when he would ever let her go. Looking at the merciless storm outside, she knew the answer. There was a ghost in Minerva's chambers and he was just biding his time.


End file.
